How To Create A Content Calendar For Instagram That Works for You

April 29, 2019

A content calendar is extremely useful to know what pictures or videos you’ll be uploading ahead of time. It allows you to forget the stress about what you’ll be uploading every day.

There are different styles and types of content calendars you can try, and see which one works best for you. While there are probably hundreds of blogs that offer content calendars as freebies, you can create one on your own. You might prefer this because you’ll be able to adjust and change anything to work best for you.

The first thing you need to decide is whether you want your calendar to be a monthly calendar or a weekly calendar. If you decide to create a monthly content calendar for Instagram then you’ll have to set apart a couple hours the last days of every month to figure out your content for the entire following month. If you choose a weekly schedule, then you’ll have to set apart a time every, Sunday, for example to create your content.

How to create a content calendar for Instagram that works for you

1. Make a calendar

Since you’ve decided that you want to try either monthly content calendars or weekly ones, now you have to actually create the calendar. Most people usually create the calendars on either Canva or Excel. There is no better choice, only the one that works best for you. If you love to get creative, go with Canva, and if you just want to get it over with, use Excel or Google Sheets.

You can make your calendar look like a regular calendar, or something completely unique to you. The only suggestion we’ll make is that you leave enough space in every square for the picture you’ll upload onto it, the content you’ll write in your caption, and the hashtags you’ll use.

2. Think about the content you want to create & organize it to your calendar

After you’ve created your calendar, come up with the content that you’ll be filling your month with. In each and every square, write down the picture or video that you’ll be uploading. Here are some examples:

January 1: A “happy new year” picture
January 2: A picture of my resolutions
January 3: A video of how your workspace looks like
January 4: A picture you took of yourself
January 5: A picture of the book you’re reading

You can post more than one of the same type of picture, but make sure to change it up, so that you’re constantly engaging your followers. You can have the same type of schedule for a week, for example, because that gives you plenty of space to post different types of pictures.

If you feel like you don’t know what type of pictures to post, read this article for ideas!

3. Batch: create all your posts at once

Now that you know what type of posts you want to upload, it’s time to actually create the content for the entire month or week. I don’t recommend getting so fancy to the point where it takes you an hour to create one post, but you do want to take enough time that you stand out amongst your competitors. You want your followers to stop scrolling to like or comment on your photo.

Since you’ve already figured out what type of content you want to upload on Instagram, now you can create the content that correlates with it. Of course, you won’t be able to create the content for everything that you want to upload.

If you’re going to upload a picture with an inspirational quote on it every Monday, then that’s something you can create ahead of time. However, if you, for example, are going to take a picture of what you’re working on that day, well, that’s something you’ll have to take the day of.

You can upload pictures of yourself even if they were taken last month, if your desk always looks the same, then you can record the video beforehand too. It’s a matter of figuring out what content needs to be created now, and knowing which ones can wait until the day of.

After that, you write the caption for every picture and figure out which hashtags you’re going to use. You’re going to take those pictures, the caption, and the hashtags and upload it to your content calendar. Now you’ll know what you’re going to be uploading every single day.

4. Download Preview (optional)

Preview is an app that lets you see how your Instagram would look if you uploaded the pictures. How your Instagram looks and the aesthetic is important because it determines whether or not people will follow you, and even buy from you.

You can download this app and take the extra time to upload the pictures, and figure out how they would look best on your profile.

5. Save the posts as drafts

You’ve got the posts, the captions, and the hashtags you want to use. You can save the pictures and caption to a social media manager like Hootsuite or MeetEdgar, but the problem with these websites is that Instagram doesn’t allow third-party websites to post directly to Instagram.

Usually what happens is that you have the post made and saved, and when the time comes that you want to post it to Instagram, you copy the post directly to Instagram (they give you an option that makes it very simple). That’s why I prefer to save Instagram posts as drafts directly on the app because it’s the same thing, but saves you the ‘copy’ step.

So, since you have everything done and written. Upload and copy and paste your content, and save it as a draft on Instagram. When you upload, look at your calendar, and post the picture you have scheduled for that day. Whether you want the hashtags in your caption or comments is up to you.

There you have it! This is how you make a content calendar that works for you.

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